In honor of tomorrow's "Let's Ignore the Superbowl and Tat" event, I'm looking for a fun pattern to work on. I'm leaning toward the Sine Wave bookmark, but also maybe the Arachne Acid Trip pattern that I got from the Palmetto Tat Days cd. It looks complicated, but it's really just a glorified zig zag.

Here's Day 9 of TIAS.

It's not a cowboy, that's for sure. Maybe a scorpion? The split rings at the end have a vsp (very small picot) on each one; I'm not used to working with size 20 thread so I'm having trouble judging how small is small. Either they disappear when I close the ring or they're too big and look funny. I'll have to work more on that. Pam's getting closer to the point where she wants to find her tatting stuff, or maybe even buy a new shuttle. I'm really looking forward to teaching her; it will be fun to have an actual person to talk tatting with. Online conversations are fun, but still impersonal.

Isn't he cute??

As part of the blog creation process, I went looking for other blogs to add to my links. I came across this one, and found an interesting pattern, the Sine Wave Bookmark. I've promised to make bookmarks for the Friends of the Library store, and this pattern gives permission to sell bookmarks made from it. I'm not sure it will be up to par for selling; it may turn out to be the practice piece to keep for myself. I'll keep at it and see how it ends up. I saw a bookmark on Facebook that had an owl charm and I think that's terribly appropriate for a bookmark. Some hours on Etsy later I found an adorable fellow with magnificent eyebrows. It came in a packet of six, so I can keep some and put some on the Friends store contribution. Contributions. :-)

Thread is Lizbeth 156, size 10.

Last Thursday was a "snow day" - 12 inches of snow fell, the schools closed, the City closed, I got to stay home. I had found an online tatting course that has a chat for beginners every Thursday, so I joined in. The lesson centered around reading tatting patterns. One of the samples looked rather interesting, so I printed it off and gave it a try tonight. The first thing I noticed was that the ring is so big that it was hard to hold onto the stitches when I got halfway done. The second thing was that closing the ring was very difficult; the stitches wanted to clump together and the core thread wouldn't slide. The third thing (after I finally got it closed) was that the ring was so big that it was floppy. No elegance at all. Now that I've taken a picture of it, I'm going to undo the ring and put the thread back onto the ball. It's all just a continuation of the class, and I did learn from it. That's the goal, right?

Lizbeth 129, size 10.

Day 8 of the TIAS is done. I'm still not sure what it's going to be, but for some reason it reminds me of a cowboy. Pam, one of the ladies at work, is just as curious as I am about the outcome. Actually, I think she's even more fascinated with the project than I am. I'm going to convince her to learn tatting one of these days. Her grandmother also tatted, so I think I can persuade her fairly easily. Here's the progress at this point:

Jane Eborall, tatting goddess, does a yearly event known as TIAS - Tat It And See. Every few days she adds to the pattern and invites everyone to tat along and offer guesses as to what the final product will be. I didn't finish last year's because I fell behind and found out that it would be a sailboat, which took all the fun out of it. 2013's TIAS turned out to be a baby carriage, and I learned some new things like split chains and split rings. We're up to Day 5 of the 2015 TIAS, and my current guess is a dragonfly. The only problem with that is the tiny ring that started it off isn't placed right to be his head. Anyway, this is my progress so far:

The thread is Lizbeth 136, Autumn Spice, in size 20.

When I was a kid, my mom made all of our clothes. I remember one dress in particular, it had a sort of gray/brown linen fabric with blue flowers. Mom added a variegated blue and white strip of tatting to the collar. She had a boxful of tatted lengths that her mother had made, and sometimes she'd add it to her sewing. That dress is the only one I remember; there may or may not have been more. I just know that I have very few pieces of Grandma's tatting left. I always thought it was neat stuff, and whenever I came across miniature tatted pieces I tried to buy a piece or two. A few years ago I decided that I wanted to learn to tat, too. Mom never learned because her mother couldn't teach her. I'm guessing that Grandma had done it by rote for so long that she couldn't do it and think about it at the same time. Anyway, I decided I needed to learn it for myself. Anyone who's ever done any tatting has struggled with "the flip", that crucial step that transfers the knot from one thread to another. Once I had that down, I was on the way. From reading other tatters' blogs and comments, I've found a common thread in our experiences. Our grandmothers tatted. Tat in public, and if someone recognizes what you're doing, they'll invariably say "my grandmother tatted." One tatter has gone so far as to describe us as the "secret knot society". Just for fun, I used Morse code to design a little motif for our secret society. SKS translates as ... -.- ... This is the result: